Laura Crocker, 1956-2007: 'Den mother' for Seattle's comics dies

Updated 10:00 pm, Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Laura Crocker, affectionately known as "den mother" to Seattle's comics, has died after a yearlong battle with lung cancer. She was 50.

Crocker, who died July 28, was one of Seattle's pioneering comedy promoters and boosters.

"She was the first real comedy producer/promoter in Seattle," said Ronald S. "Ron Reid" Brown, her husband and regional manager of Comedy Underground. "She created all this opportunity for people not only to practice their comedy, but to get paid for it."

Crocker began working with local comedians in 1979 and helped establish some of the first full-time comedy clubs in the Northwest, among them the Comedy Underground in 1981 and Giggles several years later.

Kevin Hart's Ex-Wife Torrei Says He Was Cheating on Her with Current Wife Eniko ParrishPeopleTime

Crocker, whose knack for spotting talent and warm, generous nature helped nurture the local comedy scene, was among the founders of the Seattle Independent Comedy Co-op and later co-produced the first Seattle Standup Comedy Competition, now in its 28th year.

"I fell in love with what the comedians were trying to do," Crocker told the P-I in 1987. "I even tried being a standup comedian myself for a while. Then I decided that it wasn't necessary for my ego."

Warmenhoven recalled a "This Is Your Life" spoof of comedian Lee McKay that Crocker helped organize in the late '70s at the Brooklyn Bridge, a biker bar on Aurora Avenue North where patrons threw firecrackers at comics they didn't like. Crocker brought along her pet goat to represent McKay's former girlfriend, but she confined the animal to her car while she and others were setting up the spoof.

"The goat ate the interior of her car," Warmenhoven said.

Crocker was generous and hospitable to visiting performers, letting them crash on her couch. Among the couch-crashers were struggling comics Judd Apatow (writer and director of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin") and Cheryl Holiday (a writer and producer for "King of the Hill").

At the peak of her career in the late '80s, Crocker was booking as many as 20 comedy "one-nighters" in Washington and Oregon as head of Crocker Comedy Productions. She was also the booker for Giovanni Confetti's Comedy Club in the lower Queen Anne neighborhood for four years in the '80s.